


when we fall, when we fold

by Ponderosa (ponderosa121)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Character of Color, Intersex, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Diego Hargreeves, Pseudo-Incest, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:35:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26215768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: “Sorry to break it to you, but emergency suppressants strong enough to kill a heat after it’s begun won’t be around for another six years,” Five tells him. He perches on the arm of a leather lounge chair nearby and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re just going to have to make it through the old fashioned way.”“The old fashioned way,” Diego mutters.“Grin and bear it, Two.”[Originally for an omega!Diego prompt on the kinkmeme, but I deviated from OPs request, so posting up in here instead.]
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Diego Hargreeves
Comments: 27
Kudos: 191





	when we fall, when we fold

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to write this for a kinkmeme prompt, but I deviated wildly from the original request so I just let this go where it would. Unbeta'd (lol) so if you see any egregious errors, please let me know! Some ableism when it comes to mental hospitals and other canon-typical language usage.

Just like everything else Diego’s told them since he was committed, the doctors have steadfastly refused to believe him. He’s getting desperate, and that hated whine comes into his voice as he tries, again, to get them to see reason. He yanks up his sleeve and thrusts out his arm. “Look, I have an implant that releases suppressants into my system,” he says, spreading his fingers to pull the skin taut and point out the faint line of it beneath his skin. “It’s only good for six months, and it’s going to run out soon. I’m going to need a prescription.”

Doctor Moncton looks up from the chart briefly. “A man your size and with your physique?” he says. His gaze hardly even skims the spot on Diego’s arm before he jots down some notes. “Your... _obvious_ signs of aggression?”

These goddamn 1960s stereotypes. Diego’s fingers twitch as he imagines ripping the man’s head clean off. “Like I’ve said before, I was raised in a house full of alphas and I trained with them. I kept up that training and I’m careful with what I eat so I don’t lose muscle mass.”

“So I’ve been told. Seems you get creative with trades in the cafeteria.”

“Because I need the protein,” Diego explains, slowly like he’s talking to a five-year-old. How many ways can he say the same thing? He grinds his teeth. “Do a full gyno, test my blood, whatever, just— Please, Doctor, I don’t think you want one of your patients going into heat.”

The man puts aside his pen and folds his hands together before him on the desk. He looks Diego square in the eye, his nostrils flaring on a slow, deep inhale. Instinct tells Diego to drop his gaze, while training and stubborn pride says to hold it, no matter what. With a frustrated snarl, Diego allows instinct to win and looks to the floor, staring at a point just in front of the toes of his soft-soled shoes.

Moncton’s soft whuff of dismissive amusement raises the hair on the back of Diego’s neck.

“You can’t simply pretend to be an omega, Diego,” he says, voice dripping with condescension. There’s a click as he caps his pen and sets it down on the blotter. “You might like to _think_ you’re one because of the same self-persecution that comes from having such a strong alpha for a father, but it’s not any healthier for you to believe that you’re a lesser biotype than it is to continue on with this fantasy of saving the president. Do you see, also, how at odds those two ideas are? If you were truly an omega, how could you ever hope to stop an assassination?”

“What if you’re wrong about me?” Diego asks, with an echo of the same sullen resentment as when he’d first presented and his father had threatened to strip him of his number. 

But unlike Reginald Hargreeves who had looked him up and down and said, “I shall await being proven wrong, Number Two,” Doctor Moncton simply smirks and says, “I can assure you, Diego, I’m not wrong.”

Diego’s hands curl into fists. It might be another week or even a full month, but the implant’s effectiveness is going to wear off one way or another.

*

_Some weeks later._

Diego rolls a bead around between his fingers and stares at the calendar tacked to the wall of the common room. There’s only one week left before Kennedy is going to be shot. He’s running out of time. He needs to get out of here and get his hands on some suppressants. If the bars in his room aren’t weakened enough by tomorrow to bust them loose, he might need to do this the hard way and risk leaving some bodies behind. Collateral damage in the grand scheme of things might not be unforgivable.

Movement happens in his peripheral, and he glances over to find Lila dropping into the empty chair beside him. Her lip peels back from her teeth and she leans towards him slowly, deliberately. “Something smells… off,” she says, her eyes narrowing.

She loudly sniffs the air, and fear skitters down Diego’s spine, a rush like ice water that makes it impossible in the moment to judge whether or not his temperature has risen. Is it starting already?

“Yeah?” he says, aiming for nonchalant. He drops the stupid craft project on the table and pushes the hair away from his face—it’s grown so fast—using the motion as an excuse to subtly press his palms to his forehead. He doesn’t _feel_ warm, but he also hasn’t experienced the onset of a heat since he was twelve and Mom had made up an excuse to isolate him from the others.

He can remember it so clearly, even now.

_He’d felt fine the night before and woken to sweat-soaked sheets. Mom had caught him trying to stuff them in the washing machine before anyone else noticed. He didn’t want them to think he’d wet the bed for the first time in years when he hadn’t. He just felt a little funny, he’d thought. But Mom had known right away, and Ben was the only one to notice when she’d whisked Diego through the halls to the Academy’s infirmary._

_“Is something w-wr—” he fought to finish the word, but he couldn’t get the question out. He couldn’t even try and picture it in his mind because his skin was buzzing and everything was so loud. His siblings were all the way on the other side of the house and he could hear them like they were on the other side of the door._

_“Nothing is wrong with you, Diego,” Mom said. She smiled at him as she filled a syringe from a vial. “Different isn’t wrong.”_

_And then Dad had come in and looked down his nose and said with this trademark derision, “Statistically, I suppose one of you was bound to be an omega.”_

“I think Bernard crapped his pants again,” Lila declares. She sniffs again, then flops back into her seat, one leg hooked and dangling over the chair’s arm. “That or it’s chipped beef for supper. A steaming pile of shit either way.”

Diego’s about to agree when the orderly waves at him and tells him he has a visitor. A visitor… for him? He feels Lila’s curiosity burning into his back as hot as his own as he’s escorted out of the common area and into a small visitation room. At the sight of Five, a rush of elation roars through him, relieving a bit of tension he didn’t even know he’d been carrying.

He takes a seat at the table and it’s like no time at all has passed since he’d last seen his brother. Five makes what might be a snide remark in the guise of a compliment. Diego insults his timing. They fall right back into trading barbs like breathing, and the wavering unease about his cycle that’s been sitting under Diego’s skin washes away entirely. He feels perfectly fine again, as settled as possible given the reminder of how he’d gotten into this mess. Probably, it’s just the clock ticking down to next Friday that has him so jumpy, and not the other, less lethal time bomb.

“How long have you been here?” Diego asks. He doesn’t need to explain he means 1963 and not the city itself.

“I got in this morning.”

Of course it would be like that. Even as kids, if Five wasn’t early to the dinner table he was always almost late. He never managed to be right on time. With prompting, Five tells Diego how he’d found him, and as Diego leans forward to explain quietly just how useless local law enforcement has been, he can taste a change in Five’s scent. His brother suddenly glances away from him to the orderly at the door.

When Five's keen gaze returns, his eyes dart between Diego’s as if doing a bit of mental math, and a rush of triumph floods Diego’s veins when Five says, “Give us a minute. I need to speak with my brother. Alone.”

Despite the body he’s stuck in, Five speaks so authoritatively, with such natural alpha assurance, that the big man simply complies.

“We’re going to rescue the President, aren’t we?” Diego asks gleefully the moment they’re alone. He’d put money down that with the way Five is looking at him it means Five is entirely on his side for once. He tips his head to the side, teeth hard on his lip as Five leans across the table. Anticipation sings in his blood. There will be headlines about them. _JFK Saved by Mysterious Duo._

But his brother doesn’t say that of course they’re going to go and stop the assassination. Instead, Five’s nose wrinkles and he asks: “Are they dosing you?”

Diego frowns and struggles to hide the sudden resurgence of worry about his approaching cycle. “What? No. I mean, not since the first week. Why?”

“You seem off, and you smell... different.”

His stomach drops out. He lifts his arm to sniff-test himself, but he can’t scent anything other than the awful detergent they use to keep the uniforms blindingly white. He reeks of it and the shitty soap in the showers. That’s probably all that Five is picking up on, he tells himself, even as the nervousness comes thundering back.

“Of course I seem off, I’ve been locked up here for months. Just get me out of here, Five!” Diego hisses. 

“Months?” Five whispers back. “How long have you been here?”

“Seventy-five days, to be exact.” It hasn’t been so bad, really. It’s kept a roof over his head and food—albeit, mostly disgusting and barely palatable food—in his belly while he’s been waiting for the twenty-second of November to come around. And he’s even made a friend.

Lila’s a little weird, even for a mental hospital, but she’s clever and funny. She’s also dysfunctional enough she’d fit right in with his siblings, wherever the rest of them are…. He’d tried looking in the days after he first landed in that alley behind Commerce and Knox, before he focused a hundred percent on the more important mission facing him—

“Shut up and focus,” Five says, and that’s when Diego realizes he’s said some, if not all, of that aloud. He blinks and gathers up the scattered threads of his thoughts as Five scrutinizes him more closely. “What are you so nervous about?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re starting to sweat.”

“Am I?” Diego blinks again, forcing away the fogginess that’s making it newly difficult to concentrate. Fuck. So much for that whole maybe-he’s-not-actually-going-into-heat thing. Silently, he formulates a new plan. Step one: Get out of the loony bin by any means necessary. Step two: Make a quick stop at a pharmacy. Step three: Take care of Lee Harvey Oswald on his own if it comes to that.

Five’s fingers twitch and his gaze skips to Diego’s throat to measure the beat of his pulse shivering just beneath his skin. When his eyes snap back up, Diego can tell that his brother knows. “Of course,” Five crows, his hand flattening on the table. “Vitamin deficiency, my ass. Those pills you had to take when we were thirteen were suppressants, weren’t they? The only omega out of all of us. No wonder you always had something to prove.”

“Yeah, so, now you know. Let’s get the fuck out of here. Kennedy is going to die in a week and we have to do something about it.”

“Forget the President. You know you’re too far along for me to just walk you out of here, right? I know your scent, Diego, and it’s already changed.”

“Good thing you don’t need to use the front door,” he snaps. He holds out his hand and swallows, preparing for the gut-lurching feeling of being dragged through nothingness, but Five stands up and takes a step away from him like he’s tainted. What does he have to be afraid of? It’s not like they aren’t family. “C’mon. We just go through the wall and—”

“And? And then what, I risk exposing my heat-crazed brother to a bunch of passersby on the street?”

“I’m not heat-crazed! Look at me,” Diego says, gesturing at himself. Sure, he’s getting a little warm, but he’s not some mad horny bitch who needs to get knotted so badly he can’t think straight. If anything, Five’s the one who’s all wound up and agitated right now.

“Not yet, but I don’t think you know how fast an omega can turn, and you’re—” Five’s jaw clenches and he looks everywhere but at Diego. His nostrils flare delicately. “You’re already getting wet.”

Diego squeezes his thighs together. It’s barely even a hint of a trickle. “Yeah well, everyone’s front hole gets a little slippery once in a while, that’s normal.”

“Nothing about this is normal,” Five mutters. “Just, wait here a minute, all right? Trust me.”

Before Diego can protest, Five vanishes with a pop of displaced air. He looks to the door, where the window is blocked by the orderly’s back pressed up against the glass. At least the guy didn’t see Five blink out. On the other hand, it’d serve the big man right to be on the other end of the baton for once.

The seconds crawl by, and as they do, Diego struggles to take stock of his own state. He’s definitely a little sweaty and there _is_ a bit of something going on downstairs, but even if he catches his thoughts wandering they mostly go to Lila or to his objective, they don’t veer toward anything lewd like exposing his throat or baring his belly.

He’s going to miss Lila. Like, for reals miss her. Even if the bitch stole his Jell-O, she’d made it up to him by smuggling him extra eggs. And then there was the time she’d sucker punched him so hard it—

Diego squirms in his seat. If he doesn’t scrounge up an emergency dose before he’s in a full-blown heat, it’s gonna be nasty, but it’ll be two days at most shacking up with whatever alpha manages to get to him first—who will most definitely not be Lila–so he’ll still have time to recover from the rutting and intercept Lee Harvey Oswald.

There’s a soft _fwump_ as Five appears again in the room. Diego’s head jerks up, but Five doesn’t pop back into the space across the table, the push of air comes from behind him. Before Diego can twist around to ask what the fuck Five is up to, his brother’s hand clamps down hard on the nape of his neck. It’s such a cheap fucking trick that it actually works, his body going limp instinctually. 

“The dispensary in this place is a joke,” Five tells him, and maybe there’s even a hint of regret in his tone as the syringe looms large in the corner of Diego’s eye. “This was the best I could do.”

“No, not the needle,” Diego pleads. As he regains his motor function, he struggles, but Five’s too fucking fast and he can’t avoid the sharp sting and the plunge that forces too-familiar chemicals into his veins. “Not the needle….”

As the sedative overtakes him, Diego feels Five grip his arm and the awful twisting sensation of being dragged into the void. His head spins, and the last thing he thinks is that he’s grateful that he’s at least not going to care when they make it to the other side and he loses his lunch.

*

Slowly, Diego comes to, fighting his way back to consciousness through a clinging syrupy haze. He draws in a breath deep enough that his lungs ache and tries to pinpoint the familiar scent threaded among a barrage of unfamiliar smells. It eludes him along with higher thought as he stares dumbly at what is probably his hand. Flexing his fingers makes the blurry shapes move, and with every blink of too-heavy eyes, more of the world swims into view. It’s too colorful to be his room at the hospital. Where is he?

He frowns and tries to remember. He recalls the heat of a brick wall warmed by the sun under his palm, then the sticky vinyl of a bench seat and the cold blast of air conditioning. God, that’d felt amazing. Staggered on either side of those moments is the memory of a hand clutching at him hard enough to bruise.

The sound of a radio flipping on assaults his ears. He winces at the hiss and pop as the dial turns through a series of stations before settling on a news report, and the cadence of the announcer's voice alone brings everything rushing back.

1963... President Kennedy… _Five…_

Diego’s vision continues to swim as he struggles against whatever is restraining him. Straitjacket is his first thought, but no, he’s not swaddled against himself, his legs and arms are strapped down. A chair, maybe. He squints, and the shadows around him coalesce further. The smudge hovering in front of him splits into two like a bad projector before it snaps back together and he makes out the shape of his brother’s scrawny body. “Five? Is that you?”

“Yes, Diego, it’s me. You burned right through that sedative like it was nothing.” Another blink and the frown tugging the corners of Five’s mouth taut comes into focus. “It hardly kept you under for more than a couple hours. How are you feeling?”

He scrapes his teeth over his tongue. It feels thick in his mouth. In fact, his whole body feels thick, blood roaring through his veins and into his muscles, leaving his skin too-warm and tight like he’s spent a few hours at the gym giving it his all.

“Thirsty. And like I want to tear your throat out.” 

“That’s the first stage of your heat talking.”

More like it’s par for the course dealing with any of his siblings. But maybe especially Five when he’s got that smug, know-it-all look on his face. Diego yanks his arm against the restraints to no effect. A snarl ripples up the back of his throat and he thrashes. Leather creaks, and the metal of the chair groans alarmingly despite being bolted solidly to the floor.

“You’re experiencing a rise in temperature, and the aggression to match. You’re preparing to evade any alpha not worthy of mating with you, but the symptoms will die down when your body is fully ready for coupling.”

 _No shit,_ Diego thinks. With effort and a few calming breaths, he tamps down the red eating into his vision to tell Five, “Please don’t ever say those words again.” Another breath, his brother’s scent unmistakable now and overwhelming everything else—sharp undercurrent like black pepper and burnt wiring under the sweetness of salt-water taffy. “Did you pick up anything to stop it? To stop my—” Diego bares his teeth and looks away. He can’t say it. 

“Sorry to break it to you, but emergency suppressants strong enough to kill a heat after it’s begun won’t be around for another six years,” Five tells him. He perches on the arm of a leather lounge chair nearby and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re just going to have to make it through the old fashioned way.”

“The old fashioned way,” Diego mutters.

“Grin and bear it, Two.”

A hard shudder ripples through him. “Who’s hiding around the corner with the radio?” Diego asks. Even if he can barely taste anything beyond Five, with his senses cranked up to eleven, he can hear the guy’s heartbeat and the ragged whisper of his breath. 

Five looks beyond Diego, his expression vaguely pained. “That’s Elliott. Lucky for you, he’s a beta, so you won’t need to worry about him when you hit stage two.”

Stage two. It’ll be on him soon enough. Diego flashes back to the biology lessons they’d all sat through as children, when he’d assumed that like the rest of his siblings he was going to be an alpha, because how could anyone with their abilities present as anything else.

“Increased arousal and indiscriminate sexual appetite,” he mutters. Sweat trickles down his spine, gathering at the base of his back. His palms are slick, too, and… other parts of him. If Five can smell how wet he is now, he’s at least pretending not to.

“Once you’re firmly in stage two and no longer aggressive, I’ll release you from the chair. You can make sure you’re hydrated and then disappear for some private time in Elliott’s bedroom while I figure out where everyone else ended up.”

“Just let me go now, Five.”

“No,“ Five says, leaning forward with a smug smile on his face. He pats Diego on the cheek. “But it’s for your own good. If I let you go, you might hurt yourself or get yourself thrown in jail. Or both.”

“I’m not going to hurt anyone!” Diego insists. As the shout rips up his throat, a growl follows, and his hand balls into a fist. He struggles against the straps again, and this time something gives. Another hard yank and his arm is suddenly, blessedly free. He doesn’t think, he just moves, and they’re both surprised when he catches Five by his shirtfront.

Scent flooding with the coppery tang of a fight response, Five blinks out and reappears a good six feet away. “I seem to have underestimated your strength,” he says, one brow arched keenly as he smooths the wrinkles out of his sweater. Five shakes his head, and as Diego rips the rest of the restraints off himself, his brother doesn’t seem to care anymore about the idea of him being loose. He’s stopped patting himself down and is looking at his hand, thumb rubbing against his forefingers, his expression slowly twisting towards confusion. “And I… I—”

No longer held down, the fury coursing through Diego eases to a simmer. He rises out of the chair, concern providing extra clarity even as his body burns. “Five, what’s wrong?”

“Your sweat is saturated with pheromones already,” he says. He sniffs his fingers and winces. He looks up at Diego, his pupils shifting from pinpricks to nearly eating all the color from his eyes. “You’re going into stage two.”

“That’s a good thing. Isn’t it?”

“Not exactly,” Five says. He puts another few feet between them, and Diego notices that he’s trembling now. “I, uh, haven’t seen you for forty-five years, Diego, and although I remember your scent, it seems that this body might not….”

“What are you saying?” No matter the lack of blood relation, they ought to be immune to one another. They’d been raised like littermates, but if Five’s time-travel body only _looked_ the same as it did back then— Diego swallows, trying to pretend the heat sizzling through him isn’t keeping his attention fixed on the only alpha in the room. That he doesn’t know, deep down, why Five is practically the only thing he can smell. “Just because you’re hitting puberty again doesn’t mean you’re ready to mate....”

“I was stuck in the future alone for a long time, and since my wife never went into heat I have no idea how old I was when my alignment presented,” Five chokes out. His mouth falls open on shallow breaths as he stares down at himself. He retreats another step. “I’m either going through it again or this body just doesn’t think of you as my brother.”

“Shit,” Diego murmurs, but his hindbrain is right there agreeing that it doesn’t matter if they’d been brought up together. Five had been strong enough to grab his neck and kitten him. And strength isn’t the only indicator of a worthy mate. Five is wickedly fast, and fearless, and too smart for his own good. Diego curses again and shakes his head, attempting to shed the thoughts seeking to convince him to go along with the fire burning in his veins and the needy throb between his legs.

“I need to find something to dampen your scent,” Five says, glancing around as he tries to put more distance between them. He shouts for Elliott, and there’s the squeal of couch springs, but at Diego’s answering snarl, the beta’s footsteps hesitate.

“You come in here, Elliott, and you’ll regret it,” Diego warns. He picks up a letter opener and sends it whizzing across the room. At the last moment, he curves it so it strikes below a framed portrait, the point quivering in the wall where the person’s neck would be. 

“You don’t come in here and you’ll regret it,” Five snaps, but the beta’s already running in the other direction. Five’s darting away, too, and Diego huffs a laugh. How many alphas had underestimated him over the years? He’d never faced one during a heat, yet, still too many to count.

But even if retreating is omega behavior, something he should read as weak and undesirable in this state, his hindbrain already doesn’t care, and his logical mind argues it isn’t weak at all: Five is fighting hundreds of years of instinct well enough to control his own building rut and dig through a scatter of jars on a tabletop as Diego advances.

“Why fight it, Five?” Diego hears himself say. _Indiscriminate_ , he thinks dimly, as he sheds his shirt and uses it to mop up his sweat. The fever is still burning, driving him to run his hands down over his own skin as his pores leak his scent into the air. _Look at me, belly bared._ “We’re not blood kin.”

“You think that makes a difference?” Five asks. He unscrews a jar and tosses liquid on the floor between them. “You’ll regret this.”

Diego stops and shies away, the harsh sting of chemicals rising so strongly he can practically see the fumes wavering in the air between them. He tosses his shirt on top of the spill and stands up tall. Five can’t avoid looking at the span of his chest and Diego _preens._ His heatslick is starting to soak through his shorts and into the fabric of his pants, the material sticking to his thighs. “And you won’t?”

“I’ve always seen the world in a few more shades of grey than you have,” Five says, mouth slanting wryly. _Smirking._

Another splash of photo chemicals hits the ground between them. Maybe it’s helping Five dampen Diego’s scent, but what’s the point? He moves in and out of space, zig-zagging across the room with soft pops of air. Whatever words are spilling past his lips, Diego doesn’t hear them, all he sees is the hard line of Five’s teeth and the potential of having them dug into his throat.

That, and for the very first time in his life, the throes of his heat lets him see Five’s trajectory through the void. The next time his brother blinks out, Diego charges and _twists_ , pulling that negative space and curving it back towards him. Five reappears, not where he’d expected, but caged in the corner between the trap of Diego’s arms.

“Diego, stop!” Five commands, his brows slashed dark and low over narrowed eyes.

It almost works. Maybe if there’d been anger on his brother’s face, it might have cooled him down and sent his metaphorical tail tucking between his legs, but there’s only patronizing concern, and, as Diego dips his head down to look Five directly in the eye, the heady scent of his brother’s desire rising from his skin.

“You don’t want this,” Five says. His entire body is shaking now, fingers white-knuckled as he plasters himself to the wall. He might try and go straight through it, but Diego’s certain he could pull him back, curve an arc so tight Five would land mere inches from where he started.

“Don’t tell me what I want,” Diego says, a deep purr rippling into his voice as he slides his chin alongside Five’s. “Show me what _you_ want.”

Five’s palms slap against his chest, and he shivers to hear his name. It’s a frustrated howl the first time, bookended by curses, but the next, when Five’s blunt nails scratch furrows down his front, it’s a spittle-laden hiss. “We could’ve stopped this,” Five insists before dragging a wide lick across Diego’s right pec. His eyes are flooded dark, wild with lust under the fringe of his hair. “...Could have figured something out.”

“Save it,” Diego murmurs, words slurring as Five marks him with his scent and then gives him a shove and tells him to get moving. Grinning, Diego staggers backwards, heatslick dripping freely down his legs as he undoes his fly to make himself available to his alpha. He rips off his shoes and kicks off his pants, tasting the change in Five’s scent when there’s nothing at all left to dampen the smell of his heat. He sinks to the floor and Five follows, his brother’s hands hard and demanding on his hips. The thrill of having his belly exposed and neck exposed as his whole body burns is like a drug. Better than a drug. He’s swollen and ready as he spreads his legs wide, his cunt plump and sensitive and his dick jutting up stiff as a rock.

“I meant the bed, dummy, not in here,” Five mutters. His palms skid up Diego’s front, fingers fanning out to slot along the ridges of his ribs. He inhales deeply. “I’m too fucking old to want to rut on a floor with no carpet.”

“You’re fine,” Diego insists, because everything is fine. There’s never been anything more perfect than this moment.

He feels the pull in every fibre of his being as Five blinks them into the other room and drops them straight atop the bed. The mattress dips under their weight, springs squealing, the blankets already rumpled like a nest. Diego ought to feel queasy and annoyed by the move, but his heat keeps the nausea at bay and he wriggles his back into the mess of bedding. Being marked with an alpha’s scent is making him needier and he paws at Five’s clothes, desperate to have more bare skin against his and for the push of Five’s cock into him.

He needs it so badly, his body is so empty it’s aching. “Please, Five, I need you,” he hears himself say as he lifts Five’s vest and rips at the buttons of his shirtfront. _“Please.”_

Some part of Diego registers a bit of smug satisfaction watching Five’s tenuous control crumble into dust. How he goes from shrugging out of his jacket to tearing at his own clothes with the same hasty urgency as Diego. And when he shoves Diego’s knees back and sinks into him with fumbling fingers to guide the tip of his cock, Diego’s spine arches.

His body feels like the sun, impossibly hot and powerful, as ready to consume as it is to give life. He writhes beneath Five’s slight weight, flexes _around_ him, clenching desperately at the quick, hard thrusts that bury Five’s cock in him to the hilt as if that’ll keep Five in him forever.

“You’re so damn _wet,”_ Five groans, licking the heatslick straight off his fingers before his hands clamp to Diego’s shoulders. He dips down to smear a kiss near the hinge of Diego’s jaw, his mouth falling open on a gasp of pure pleasure.

“Five,” Diego moans, a part of him stirring that wants to flip them over, to be the one pinning down his alpha instead. The bite of sharp teeth at his earlobe and Five’s quiet, half-mad laugh buries it deep again. He bucks under Five, hips tipping to meet the slap of his brother’s body, the hint of a knot starting to swell and rub at him on the inside, stroking all that heat-sensitive flesh and scattering sparks throughout him.

“So I’m your first,” Five says, marking his scent along Diego’s jaw again before sitting back on his heels. His hands slide possessively along Diego’s thighs and Diego shudders when they both look down to watch the way they fit together.

A bigger alpha could hold him down by force, could smother him under weight and muscle. But Five— He’s pinned by the look in Five’s eyes alone, the cut of his grin sharper than a razor.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve had sex, asshole,” Diego manages to say. It’s hard to get words out. They don’t stumble on his tongue, it’s just difficult to want to do anything other than let pure sound pour out of his throat. He’s not made for thinking. He’s made to be bred, and that’s just what Five is doing—pumping into him, hips slapping, his cock fattening up with each stroke.

“But I’m your first during a heat,” Five says. He sounds almost awed, drunk on the knowledge that he’s breaking Diego in. His grip turns hard, fingers indenting into the meat of Diego’s thighs. His teeth drag over his lip and he glances up, keen-eyed and hungry. “You’ve never been knotted before, have you?”

Diego’s dick jumps, leaking precome over his belly, and when he clenches his cunt and feels an answering throb, he groans. “No,” he admits, and groans again, the sound echoing out of his chest as he flings an arm over his eyes.

His hips buck wildly, spine arching off the bed as his cock bounces and slaps against the flat of his stomach. Five fucks into him with a steady, building rhythm, and it’s too much. Everything is too much. He keens under the drag of wide-spread hands along his body that leaves his skin seared in its wake. That rising heat pools like lava beneath Five’s palms when he clutches at Diego’s hips. There’s a vicious expression on his brother’s face—Diego knows it’s there, it must be—the curl of his lips that says Diego belongs to him now. All that apha domination distilled into something near-feral. He’ll never be able to look at Five the same way after this, won’t be able to avoid the belly-quivering desire to offer up his throat and beg to be bonded and bred.

It’s an offer that he’s making now as he’s spread out and speared by Five’s swelling cock. His own feels impossibly hard, waiting to burst, each thrust that strokes inside him sending wildfire pleasure roaring along his nerves. He’s fully ripe, the juicy sound of Five moving inside him pushing the flame-lick beyond the tender, heatslick walls of his cunt up through the taut length of his cock, to the aching, blood-thick crown where he’s just as wet. Each slap of skin and plunging thrust drives desire along the twisting bow-curve of his spine until his whole body is devoured by it.

“Come on my dick, Diego,” Five tells him. It’s a command snarled against his cheek, the flat of bared teeth pressed to pheromone-drenched skin. A bite follows, sting soothed by a lick and a snap of Five’s hips. He’s hardly moving now, shallow thrusts more like grinding, knot ready and waiting to pop. His mouth moves against the short hairs of Diego’s beard. “I want you throbbing before I dump a load in you.”

Diego drops his arm to curl it around Five’s back. He clutches his alpha tighter, feeling the muscle moving beneath Five’s skin as his brother fucks into him. Five is all whipcord lean and Diego guesses he’ll probably stay that way as his body ages again. Just like Klaus, he won’t even care if he’s read at a glance as anything other than alpha because why should he? He opens his mouth and people listen. Diego snarls to think it—how different they are and the unfairness of the stereotypes; how he can’t escape them, even as he’d hated the doctors for believing them. He bites back a whimper as his hold claws into Five’s back.

“Come for me,” Five says, his mouth dragging towards Diego’s to claim it, too.

He can’t hold back the whimper this time, lets Five lick the soft, mewling noises straight from him. Five flattens against him, ensuring that he can’t ignore his cock’s slippery drag against Five’s smooth belly as they fuck.

“Bite me,” Diego pleads. “Bite me, Five.”

“Fuck, Diego, you always did like playing with fire,” Five says, his lips still on Diego’s. His tongue pushes in again, curling deep, flexing with the same rhythm that rolls along his spine. 

There’s a tremor, too, a shiver that signals his brother is still holding himself back. Diego twists his head back and to the side, if not the bundle of nerves along the slope of his neck, he says with his body, then his throat, soft and vulnerable.

Five rips away from the kiss with a gasp to nose beneath Diego’s chin. The edge of his teeth scrape over Diego’s adam’s apple to find and seize the cord of muscle pulling tight above his jugular. With a soft whimper, Diego tips his chin down so Five can clamp there more firmly, a mouthful of his flesh delivered to his brother’s jaws.

He groans as Five slides slim arms beneath him and ruts into him with no rhythm left, the sound rising into a howl as the bite eases, replaced by a hard, sucking kiss that pulls blood to the surface of his skin. He’s being _marked_.... He can smell the burst capillaries, the metal zing of it in the air before the shudder and spill between them overwhelms it. Overwhelms everything as Diego comes so hard he sees stars.

“Oh god, yes,” Five says, face pressing to Diego’s neck. His breath turns to short panting gasps as Diego’s cunt seizes around him.

Diego clings to Five, his heat turning the waves of his orgasm into an echo chamber of pleasure, each shuddering throb turned back on itself and multiplying. His toes curl into the bedding as Five fucks him through it, his brother’s parted lips rubbing aimlessly over the throbbing patch of skin he’s left a claim on. 

Diego’s cock ceases its twitching long before his cunt stops throbbing, the muscles there still clenching rhythmically around Five’s cock. “Yeah, that’s it, Diego, come for me,” Five says, before his jaws clamp down a second time on Diego’s throat and he’s back to rutting with single-minded purpose.

A low snarl sputters in Five’s chest as he stops suddenly, grinding in as deep as he can. Between their bellies, Diego’s cock is come-slicked and sensitive, still thick even when spent. Inside him, the swelling of Five’s knot grows rapidly, thickening to twice the size of his cock before Diego feels the first hot gush of come pump into him. It spills out of Diego easily, seed mixing with his heatslick to leak onto the bedding beneath them. As soon as it hits him, the scent of Five’s come triggers a second orgasm, and Diego whines desperately as his cunt seizes again. He arches off the bed, hands grasping at Five’s ass to hold him deep as his body seeks to milk Five dry and catch his knot.

He’s still clinging, minutes later, when his breath has evened out and he can nearly think straight again. He blinks his eyes open and swallows thickly, thighs twitching to trap Five as his brother shifts.

“I’m not going to pull out,” Five promises, moving to prop his weight on his wrists and look down on Diego. His eyes have gone heavy-lidded, mouth slack and sated. “Not unless I have to.”

Diego’s brow furrows as he wonders if Five even could. His cock might not be all that big, but his knot is sizeable enough and they seem tied pretty firmly.

“I can just blink to the other side of the bed, dipshit,” Five says, reading the look on Diego’s face. His tone softens and he drops to an elbow to smooth the hair away from Diego’s forehead. “So you can rest easy, okay? If trouble shows up for some reason, I’ll take care of it.”

“I’m not worried,” Diego says, a little shocked to realize that he means it. He’s never felt so secure before in his life, so certain that someone has his back.

It’s probably just the temporary high of being knotted, but as Five continues to stroke his hair, he stops trying to fight against his own nature. He nestles a little deeper into the bedding, reveling in how its saturated with their scent. One after another his muscles relax, and with it, his guard lowers, no longer attuned, however faintly to the sounds beyond the soft whuff of his alpha’s breath.

“We’re going to find the others,” Five tells him. He runs his knuckles down Diego’s face, before cradling Diego’s cheek as if he’s something fragile and precious. “We’ll figure out what’s going to cause this new apocalypse and set things right. And then we can go home.”

“Find them.... Stop the world from ending and save Kennedy,” Diego agrees, nuzzling blissfully into Five’s palm. “Home.”

“Three out of four ain’t bad,” Five tells him, and Diego doesn’t bother to pick apart what that means as he closes his eyes and drifts into the comfort of knowing that his alpha will take care of him.

**Author's Note:**

> Other places you can find me on the internet:
> 
> Instagram [@KimKuzuri](https://www.instagram.com/kimkuzuri/) for art/wips/process videos.  
> Twitter [@ponderosa121](https://twitter.com/ponderosa121/) for yelling about things and art.  
> Tumblr as [ponderosa121](https://ponderosa121.tumblr.com/) and Discord as ponderosa#1249.


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